The Evolving Copywriter's Web Site: The Death of the Home Page?

Is the Home Page dead? Are copywriters wasting their time writing them?

That’s the question posed by Matt Ambrose of the Copywriter’s Crucible (to be fair, plenty of others are asking the same thing).

The idea that every page is now potentially a landing page is generating some heavy, Russian-novel-level brooding in the marketing world, and certainly fueled an explosion in landing-page specialty firms.

In Matt’s case, the SEO benefits of his blog are paying dividends — it’s far outpacing his Web site on Google.

In this case, the old saw about the shoemaker’s children going shoeless applies; I’ve been too busy handling work to get my own marketing house in order.

Still, it’s time to clean up the online mess I’ve created. I’ve got a couple ideas, but rather than spill them here, I’m going to document my own marketing integration process as it happens.

I’m on a quasi-vacation the second half of this week (I’m staying at a wine-country home with stunning views, gorgeous gardens and great accommodations — I’d make millions on writer’s retreats if I only I could convince the owner to hold them).

That means I won’t start until next week. Along the way, I plan to ask a few members of the copywriting blogosphere for their thoughts.

My thinking, however, begins now.

My advice to Matt? Consider a stopgap; create some quality “thought leader” content and offer it at the top of your blog sidebar — in exchange for an e-mail address (or a visit to your Web site if you don’t want to get in the e-newsletter business). Then start thinking.

Tom, I’m so glad you posted about this topic. I’ve been reading much about businesses blending website content into their blogs, or vice versa. As the live web keeps things on fire, I can’t even imagine having a static “business card” site in addition to my blog.

This approach may not work well for all businesses, but for my money, the blend is the only way to go. What sets me back is the limitation of design and structure offered by my blog software.

If you take a look at Brian Clark’s WordPress design (just made into a WP template) it blends horizontal menu items with a 3-column layout, and that’s exactly what I’ve been asking squarespace to create for months.

If I had that kind of template available I’d have no problem making my landing page my blog.

Can you tell I’m resistant to changing blog software? Squarespace, are you listening?

When delivering RSS feed content via email finally became both the cheapest, most effective, and hassle-free way to build a list of subscribers online — I totally abandoned every Web 1.0 static site and email newsletter effort and focused 100% on blogging.

I’ve never looked back.

As a blog marketing consultant who spent a few years in old-school web design, then spent a few years in the marketing trenches learning from opt-in email newsletter clients what works in the Economy of Attention, I have NO client whose web sites outperform blogs.

Every individual post is a potential landing page — the first doorway — for all search engine traffic.

The Home Page or “front” of a blog is more likely to be the second or third page viewed by a first-time visitor. Powerful referrals from blogrolls will hit the front page first — but at least those visitors are highly targeted — arriving from similar sites in a related niche.

The home page may not be dead yet — but it’s already been buried alive.

This is certainly true of the music businesses I consult. In fact (shameless plug) it’s one of the “things” in the free e-book I’ve just made available at New Music Strategies, called ‘The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online’.

Regularity of updates on a website is key to repeat business, and blogging is far and away the best way to achieve that. If you want people to come back, give them something new to see when they get there.

Blogging’s also a great way to become an opinion leader — a really incredibly helpful thing to be when you’re making money from music. Same could be said for most businesses working across the creative sector.

And, of course, one of the music industry’s biggest sins online is the standard of copywriting. I’ll be sending my people your way.

My site was designed by a very smart blogger who has been around since the beginning of blogs. She, for simplicity purposes, made my landing page using my blog template.

I have a blog and shopping cart behind the landing page. I wanted my customers/readers to come to my site and decide what they needed-to read or shop.

So technically, it is a landing page, but using a blog CMS. The vehicle is not the message, it’s just another tool. My landing page wouldn’t be any different if it were created with a WYSIWIG editor.

What I need to do now is figure out a way to add a section on my landing page that shows what what the latest post is on my blog so I can ping the landing page as well. I guess I could do it manually. Ugh.

Lots of good information. Sandra, the latest version of WordPress allows you to designate one of the static site pages as the “home” page (instead of the blog page). It’s certainly one potential way to handle a blog-centric site.

There’s no doubt a site blog will generate most of the traffic, though there are still lots of questions to be answered.

Like, what if your blog doesn’t precisely align wiht your business? How do you handle high-traffic posts that may even run counter to your messaging?

It’s an interesting series — I always thought a professional Web site should be tightly focused, yet blog entries often roam a bit.

Certainly, I’ve had a good quasi-vacation, and I’ve written down a few thoughts concerning my solution to the question.

Okay, I don’t have any arguments about the stats folks are getting for blog-style posting versus “statis” websites. The question I have, thought, is this:

If readers and visitors are coming from places other than search engines, if they are coming from referrals, etc, I’m wondering how this all fits in?

I know for me, when I’m reading blogs, I enjoy reading the blogs. But, when I’m looking for help with a particular topic, in other words, when I’m shopping for something, blogs are frustrating to me, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one.

Then, I’m looking for static, overview content about the business, what it does, and why. I don’t care, at that point, about the latest thoughts someone has had about x, y, or z. I need orientation and connection to the overall business, first.

I hear where Mark is coming from. Having a blog as a homepage seems like a great idea to the blog savvy, but what about serious business minded people looking for a service and want a snapshot of your benefits? I’m finding my keyword visitors rarely stay for long as the page format doesn’t match what they are looking for – or maybe I should throw some money at it, get a flashy new header and see what happens.

It’s good to hear the new version of wordpress allows you to specify a homepage – that might at least offer a partial solution to my quandry.

Tom, great commentary on a topic relevant to all businesses marketing online.

Mark’s comment rings especially true for me. Referrals are a key source of traffic and new clients for us, and while some of that does go straight to articles on the blog, the bulk of it comes through the homepage and converts from there.

Like you said, every organization’s different.

Re: Your suggestion to use the blog sidebar to drive main site traffic or opt-in subscriptions – I’m not sure if WordPress does this, but apparently w/TypePad you can “feature” a post so that it’s sticky at the top of your blog (in the content column as opposed to the sidebar).

For someone getting a lot of traffic to their blog’s main page, this could be a good alternative (or complement) to using the sidebar, since the main column typically gets the lion’s share of screen space.

Thanks for the response. I’m coming from the ‘old school’ (how old school can anything be these days if it ain’t ink and paper?… :-) ) of building an email newsletter list and static website.

It’s worked REALLY well for us, and continues to. And, I would still like to get the kind of traffic the blogs can help generate. I’ve seen the way Dawud Miracle has set up his website/blog:http://www.dmiracle.com
And I think that’s a powerful way to go… and his site still looks a little cluttered and confusing to me- too many things going on.

If I can come up with an even cleaner design (which is a tall order- I love Dawud as a designer and usability person) I would be tempted to go in his direction.

In the meantime, I’m letting my static website still be the main thing, with the blog as a link. it will be interesting to track what happens.

One of the other things that’s challenging from the blog point of view is that there is no customization possible, and no list segmentation possible. If I want to make an offer to my list via RSS, everyone gets the same offer.

Right now I can offer my customers and clients the gift of not trying to sell them something they already bought, because my email lists are segmented. And so I can run a strong -push- campaign successfully without alienating my current customers.

Still wondering about it all… it will be interested to see it as it evolves.

This evolving idea of using blogging platform to build out fully functioning websites appears to be gaining interest from different perspectives; in the beginning of my blogging experience (all the way back in 2004…my, my) I thought to myself, I’ll bet in 5 years nobody will be talking about blogs or blogging – it will just be the way we do business on the Web. All website will be blogs and blogs will be websites. I can see this happening more everyday. It doesn’t really matter, as long as what you have works to publish content, get traffic, connect with the people you care about and want to do business with, and your business grows. Blogging software does a great job of all of it.

Patsi: Just today I interviewed a top WordPress theme designer, and he thought that calling WordPress “blog” software was just plain dumb.

It’s far more powerful, and there’s certainly no reason not to build a site on the stuff.

I agree with you about the future; I’m already advising some clients that calling their blog a “blog” might not be the best idea given all the expectations and perceptions that come with the term.

rick gregoryJune 17, 2007, 9:29 am

Tom et al,

WordPress lets you do more that designate a page as a home page… you can create any number of normal pages that are not blog pages. Simply go into the Write tab, click Pages (you start by default on Posts) and create a new page.

You can create different templates for top level pages, category pages etc and assign the template to each page along with parenting (whether a page has a parent or not).

Alongside this you can create a normal blog page that acts just like a standalone blog site. I’ve created several sites like this and it leaves people with a very easy way to manage the more static content.

As for traffic differentials, yes, a blog will get traffic – but you have to look beyond the raw visitor numbers to issues of engagement and conversion. A blog page might bet 5x the traffic of a static web page… but if the reason is the variety of topics on the blog then some/many/most of those visitors aren’t qualified traffic – they’re not potential customers. One way to address this is simply to have a professional site where you blog about professional topics. The look and feel, branding and navigation should all tie into your services or product. Create another site to hold your personal blog. Crosslink if you want to – look at redmonk.com for an example of this.

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the underground

For almost 30 years I've worked as a writer (most of it freelance). I'm also the father of two perfect little girls.

Despite these things, I remain mostly sane.

The Underground reflects my interest in all kinds of writing and all kinds of writers (though if you're looking for SEO advice, you're probably in the wrong place).